Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: — | Date: June 24, 2011 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

There are some good books out there, thankfully, that I can just recommend wholeheartedly. And you’re in luck; the very best one is only that big: The Duties of Parents by J.C. Ryle. If you get nothing else out of the weekend except read this book, you’ll still profit very, very much. I don’t know how to stress it enough. This is just very important. It’s only, I don’t know, a couple of bucks. Every parent, every Christian parent, needs to read this book. I’ll refer to it a couple of times, but please, please do your children a favor and read that on your own. It’s one of those books that you really should read about ten times and then every year again afterwards, something like that. It’s just an excellent—am I making the point? Okay, good. All right.

Proverbs chapter 22. Proverbs chapter 22. Tonight, first, the goal of parenting and some rather sobering thoughts from Proverbs chapter 22. We’ll begin with, first of all, let’s pray.

Our Father, anytime that we open the Scriptures, we sense our need of Your Spirit to enlighten our minds and our hearts and to teach us. This evening, as we approach this immensely important subject of Christian parenting, we ask especially that You’ll open the minds and the hearts of Your people. Father, what we want, more than anything in this life, is to be successful parents. We ask that You will help us in this concentrated effort this weekend to that end, and for Your glory, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Proverbs chapter 22 and verse 15. We’ll spend a few minutes here. “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.” Or if you have one of the other versions, “foolishness is bound up in the heart of the child, but the rod of instruction or the rod of discipline drives it far from him.” One more time, “foolishness is bound in the heart of the child. The rod of correction will drive it far from him.”

Can you recall your childhood well enough to remember how much you needed your parents? Now, of course, when we’re first born, our need of parents is absolute. We need them for our shelter, we need them for our clothing, we need them to feed us, we need them to take care of the consequences. We need our parents for absolutely everything. And it was a long time until you were safe in any sense of the term. By the time we were walking, we needed mom and dad to micromanage every moment of our day. Because if they didn’t, we would hurt ourselves, kill ourselves, eat the ant poison. My brother did that. “Num, num, daddy, num, num.” Off to the hospital.

My son had a horsey that he used to ride around the house, especially upstairs along the long hallway—one of these little things you sit on with four wheels and you run along the hallway. Right over the top of the stairs, I was babysitting one evening. I wasn’t watching the kids; I was babysitting. And I looked up just in time to see them, you know, this kind of thing, all the way down the stairs. You do that when you’re kids. You don’t know better. You’re likely to play with the knives. You’re likely to take some sharp object and think, “Hey, that’s cool. It fits in an electrical socket,” you know. You need your parents for absolutely everything.

And we might as well admit it: it was a long time before you were safe. For a long time after that even, you were very likely to make choices that were not in your own best interest. And then afterwards, you still had trouble figuring out why that choice left you unhappy. You still couldn’t get the connection. Stupid choices make for unhappiness. It was a long time before you caught on to that kind of a thing. And as you grew a little bit more, you began to shed some of that foolishness until finally you got it all figured out that it was your parents who were stupid. And it wasn’t until quite a bit later when you were pretty amazed at how they’d grown up and gotten smart.

And all through your teen years and beyond, it never occurred to you that your parents really were more concerned with your welfare and your happiness and your well-being than you were. And it certainly never entered your mind that you needed them to direct your life. And all of that because foolishness is bound in the heart of the child. And most foolish of all, you are likely to think that your greatest happiness and fulfillment and satisfaction in life would be found without God. You are likely to think that your greatest fulfillment would be found in rebellion against God and in your sin. You are likely to think that temporal pleasures outweighed eternal. And that is because foolishness is bound in the heart of the child.

Surveying Wisdom And Foolishness In Proverbs

Now I would love to take an hour ahead of time—we can’t—I would love to take an hour ahead of time and just survey the teaching of Proverbs on these big themes of wisdom and foolishness. It would be a wonderful study for you to do that on your own, just run through with an English concordance even and just see: what are the ideas that are associated with the fool, with the wise man, the foolish son, the wise son, and so on? It would be a wonderful study for you.

Let’s just take two or three minutes and survey some of it. Look back at chapter one of Proverbs. Proverbs chapter one in verse seven. This is something of a text for the book of Proverbs. Proverbs chapter one, verse seven: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” That word “instruction” there is sometimes translated “discipline”; it has to do with the use of the rod, but more often it’s just instruction of any kind, whether it’s with a rod or with words. But the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fear of the Lord, of course, is the big theme in the book of Proverbs and the wisdom literature. It is the first step, the foundational stone, if you will, of all knowledge. A right orientation to God is the first step in knowledge. Or if you like, Proverbs chapter 9 and verse 10: “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” You are not wise unless you begin with a right orientation to God.

Wisdom in the book of Proverbs, in turn, is not just knowing things, and it’s not just knowing how to do things generally, but wisdom in the book of Proverbs is how to live life skillfully and successfully before God. And always in the book of Proverbs—you keep this in mind as you read it—always in the book of Proverbs, it runs along these two themes: that when you do what is wise, when you follow wisdom, not only do you do what is right and pleasing to God, but you do that which is in your own best interests. It’s good for you. It’s pleasing to God and it’s good for you.

So the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But now notice the second half of the verse: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Question: Why would anyone despise wisdom? There’s only one answer, isn’t it? He’s a fool. That’s the simple statement of the verse. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And again, this runs on two levels all through the book of Proverbs and the wisdom literature. When you do that which is foolish, you do that which is displeasing to God, that which is morally wrong, but you also act in a way that is contrary to your own best interests. So it’s foolish in every sense of the term. If you don’t know how to live skillfully before God, you’re acting in a way that is displeasing to God and is contrary to your own best interests. You’re a fool. And that’s the way Proverbs then treats it. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instructions.

And foolishness then, as we find it throughout the wisdom literature—I suppose at the very bottom of it all—foolishness is an inward bias against God and for sin. Foolishness is an inward bias against God and for sin. And so a couple of things quickly: Proverbs 14, verse 16, for example, the fool is the one who sins with confidence. He sins with confidence. It’s kind of like the child running over the top of the stairs, or maybe better, the guy in high school that’s talking about doing something, and you warn him you can’t do that, the consequences of this, and he responds, “I don’t care.” He’s a fool; he’s a fool.

In the book of Proverbs, the fool is the one who is unconcerned with the wisdom of God. The fool in the book of Proverbs is the one who will mock righteousness. The fool is the one who will make fun of sin, make light of sin. Foolishness in the book of Proverbs is that which animates and ultimately destroys the wicked (Proverbs 5:23). Foolishness in Proverbs shows itself in a propensity to evil, a preference for sin. The fool is one who hates being told what to do. The fool is one who hates being told not to sin. And foolishness in Proverbs shows itself in things like deceit, sinful speech, and all kinds of evil activity.

In other words then, foolishness is just that. It’s stupidity. It is ignorantly self-destructive. It is morally wrong, displeasing to God, and it is stupid in every sense because it is not in your own best interest, temporally or eternally.

Original Sin In Children

Now, back to our text, Proverbs 22:15. The sobering thing about this verse, then, is that this foolishness is bound in the hearts of our children. Theologians call this the doctrine of original sin. We also like to refer to it as total depravity in order to emphasize that this bias towards sin that we are born with has infected every aspect of our psyche: our intellect—it makes us think in ways that are really foolish; our affections; our will. It has so infected us that it drives us in ways that are foolish and not in our own best interests, displeasing to God and contrary to our own best interests.

And so I had to teach my children, for example, how to eat with a fork, eat with a spoon, cut with a knife, how to dress themselves, how to brush their teeth. I never had to teach them, “Here’s how you fight with one another.” I never had to teach them, “Here’s how you throw a temper tantrum.” I never had to teach, “Here’s how you lust, here’s how you’re selfish, here’s how you sass your mother.” I never had to teach any of those things because we come by it naturally. Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child.

When our children are very young—I’m sure you’ve done this yourself, I’ve done it—you like to go in the bedroom when they’re sleeping, you look through the bars of the crib and you see them sleeping there and it’s so cute and you think, “They are so…” and what’s the word? Innocent. And of course there’s a wonderful sense in which that’s true. They’ve not yet been exposed and experienced in some of the great sin that they will see later. There’s a sense in which that’s true. But of course the reality is—and we don’t think of it at moments like that—that in their hearts there is already a bias that will drive them away from God. Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child.

And so as they grow up, we hope and we might even pray with words like this: we pray that they will not drift away from the things of the Lord, not realizing that already in their heart is the strongest of bias that will take them away from God. All that’s lacking is the opportunity. Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child. We do not start out as a clean slate, polluted only if we are exposed to wrong influences. Those early tantrums that an otherwise precious little girl or precious little boy throw—they don’t come out of a vacuum. It’s not always because they’re hungry or hurting.

It’s an awful realization. It is so awful that we tend not to consider it, even though the evidence for it is in front of our eyes every day. That precious little child that God has given to us, that we adore with all of our hearts, left to himself, will choose hell. That’s the truth. He will think that his highest pleasure in life is going to be against God and in sin. He will think he will find his highest satisfaction in sin. He will argue with you about it. He’ll fight you over it. He’ll not just rebel against God; he’ll rebel against you, his parents. He’ll fight you over it. He’s willing to put your relationship on the rocks even because he’s convinced to the bottom of his socks that the highest pleasure is found in sin and away from God. Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child. And in his heart of hearts is the strongest aversion to God and the strongest of loves for sin.

If your children were here with you this evening, I would stop and exhort them. I can’t, so you exhort them this way: “If you have any self-interest at all, if you care for yourself at all, make sure you understand how much you need dad and mom.”

The Parent’s Responsibility To Restrain

Now our point this evening then is: if you would be a successful parent, you must come to grips with this truth. Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child. You’ve got to come to grips with that. And we must understand that this precious gift from God will destroy himself. He will ruin his own happiness, temporal and eternal. He’ll ruin his own happiness if he’s left to himself because he thinks he knows best how to find real pleasure and happiness.

And your responsibility then as a parent is nothing less than standing in his way. And whatever I can do—whether it’s teaching, admonishing, rebuking, correcting, spanking—I’ll do whatever is necessary to stand in the way and keep you from your own foolishness. That’s my job. And to interrupt them on what is essentially a mad rush to hell. That’s our responsibility as parents: to become, in God’s grace and in His providence, God’s means of protecting and preserving and saving grace to our children.

And so Proverbs 29 and verse 15 says, “a child left to himself…” Okay? “A child left to himself brings shame to his mother.” Or here in Proverbs 22 in verse six: “Train up a child in the way that he should go.” Not in the way that he would choose to go; train him in the way that he should go.

Many years ago, I preached a sermon to our church from the early chapters of 1 Samuel about a father there by the name of Eli. You remember him? His children were grown; his sons were grown. And they were in sin, disobedience, and God’s judgment fell on Eli. Why? Because you didn’t restrain your sons. Title of the sermon: “Restrain Your Son.” If there’s anything we learn from the example of Eli there, as parents, restrain your son. And don’t get the notion that, “Oh, they’re 18 now, they’re on their own, I’m not going to do it.” I don’t care if I’m feeble and with a cane, I will use whatever leverage is at my disposal to help my children stay away from foolishness that’s inbred in the hearts of every one of us.

Let me make this very plain. I’ve heard many Christian parents even talk in these kinds of terms that are completely inadequate. And if you’ve thought like this, you need to adjust your thinking. That is: “My job, in essence, is to get my kid to age 18, 22, out of high school, out of college—whichever—without getting pregnant, without making somebody pregnant, without getting in trouble with the law, and without doing drugs. I’ve succeeded.” Now if that’s the way you’re thinking, you’re thinking way too low. You are not thinking like a Christian. Any pagan can do that. Any pagan can have goals like that. Your goal is nothing less than to see your son and your daughter bow the knee to the Lord Jesus, joyfully and safely rest in Him for this life and the next. That’s your job. We’ll talk more about that in the next hour in a positive vein, but that is our responsibility. It is nothing less than to rescue them, to win them, and to see them come to Christ.

Now, let me say that I understand that there are no guarantees. At the end of the day, salvation is in God’s hands, and we know that. There are no guarantees, and many a wise father has had a foolish son. I know that. And it breaks my heart when I see—we have parents in our church whose kids grew up in the church, and they’ve gone, and they’ve turned away from the gospel. And from all I can tell, these parents were faithful. It’s heartbreaking. It’s painful. I know there are no guarantees. But so much as lies within me, that has to be our attitude. So much as it lies in me, I will become the means that God uses for the rescue of my children.

For my part, I’m very thankful for parents who saw their job that way. We had a home that was marked by love, that was marked by fun. It was the happiest spot on the planet. But my parents never bought into the idea that it was wrong for them to say “no,” or that it wouldn’t be healthy for me to say, “That’s wrong.” You have to use language that’s nice, like, “That’s not acceptable.” No, they were very careful to tell me that there are certain things that are wrong and that I should not do that were morally wrong and I should know it. My mother tells me that I heard the gospel from her before I was even home from the hospital the first time. I don’t remember that terribly well, but that’s the kind of home I grew up in. That’s what you want.

And we’ll talk a little bit later about other things that go into making that. But here’s our goal: When God gave me and my wife children, I determined that if they will remember anything about me and about us, it will be that we pointed them to Christ. And I was determined that if these kids are going to follow their foolishness and turn away from all that we’ve taught them, at least this much: they will never be able to say, “Yeah, I left the church because dad and mom…” That would be something I just couldn’t bear. And I was determined that when they look back on their home, they would see dad and mom loved God. Dad and mom loved the gospel. Dad and mom prayed. Dad and mom prayed for me. When they look back, they’ll see that.

And I can’t say—I wish I could—I can’t say that we were experts at it. We weren’t. My kids are young adults now. And it seems by the Lord’s grace that they’re on the right track. They love the Lord. They’re active in the church in many different ways. It seems the Lord just really owns their hearts. We’re grateful for that. I cannot say that I’m an expert at it. I look back and I can see some areas that I should have done better. But I can tell you this: that my wife and I both resolved that we would work hard at becoming experts at parenting. Why not? Don’t your kids deserve that? Don’t you love them enough for that?

We resolved we will become experts on parenting. And so we would spend long hours talking; we would lie in bed at night talking: “Where’s Jimmy? Where’s Gino? How are they coming along? Anything we should be doing? What about us? Is something we’re missing?” Discussing those things at length, talking to successful parents. I remember one time sitting down with Sarah’s parents when she was a—oh, I think a teenager at the time—saying, “Hey, you guys have done a great job with Sarah. Tell me what you did.” Talk to successful parents and, above all else, take time in the Scriptures. We’ll look through some of the passages today and tomorrow, in the book of Proverbs especially, but go to all of the passages in the Scriptures that have to talk about parenting, children, responsibilities of parents, responsibilities of children, and so on, and meditate over them and ask questions. How does this relate to what we’re doing or what we’re not doing? And soak through those verses and all of the thinking that should go with it. Think them through deeply. Saturate your mind with the Scripture’s instruction on these things. It’s absolutely vital.

Let me drive all of that with two exhortations.

Take Your Responsibility Seriously

Two exhortations. And I’m sure you already agree with these, but I’m going to push it a little bit more anyway. Number one: Take your responsibility seriously. Take your responsibility seriously. My point here is simply to say that successful parenting does not just happen. Your children and their eternal welfare are worth the effort. Take it seriously. Don’t just naively go with the flow. Don’t just naively think it’ll work out. Take it seriously. Think, evaluate, assess each of your children. Assess them where they are. You shouldn’t think that your six-year-old should be behaving like a ten-year-old, but he should be behaving like a six-year-old. Assess yourselves. How are we responding to things with our children? Think, think, think, apply, work at being a successful parent. Take your responsibility seriously.

Determine That You Will Learn From God How Best To Raise Your Children

And number two—you can’t do number one without this one—number two: Determine that you will learn from God how best to raise your children. Determine that you will learn from God how best to rear your children. Now that advice, of course, is needed in every area of life. But here, in the matter of bringing up our children, we are coming against a society with a vengeance. All of the thinking of our society is opposed to what the Scriptures teach about child rearing.

Now that amazes me. I could go for an hour on this. It just amazes me that the world can speak with more and more confidence about its instruction on how to raise your children when they are getting a lousier and lousier track record all the time. The farther we drift away from biblical norms, the worse it gets, and yet they’re increasingly confident that they’ve got the know-how, and those Christians—those poor ignorant Christians—they’ve limited themselves to a book that… oh yeah, it does work, doesn’t it? It’s just an amazing thing, but that kind of thinking permeates our society. Don’t think it hasn’t affected you. It has. It affects all of us. And we’ve got to be careful continuously to saturate our minds in the thinking of Scripture. What does God, the Creator of the home, say?

And you’ve got to ask yourself the question at the beginning of this, when your children are young: Who knows better how to rear my children—the world and its experts, or God? And you’ve got to think of it in those terms. That’s exactly the choice that you have. And so turn to the Bible with a submitting mind. Be resolved never to think that you know better. Don’t think simply that you’re doing it all right, but rethink. Go back to the Scriptures; rethink. Your children are too precious to surrender to secular opinions. And so we ought to be thinking, “For the sake of my children and their eternal welfare, I will see to it that God’s counsel reigns in my heart.” And shape your whole approach to parenting according to biblical considerations.

Now, I know you agree with all that I’ve just said in those two exhortations. I know you agree; you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t. I know you agree with that. But the problem is not in agreement; the problem is following through, isn’t it? Because every one of us knows better than we do—every one of us. And it takes a concentrated effort to say, “I’m not going to grow indifferent, I’m not going to grow naive, I’m not going to become lazy. I’m going to put my mind to this thing and prayerfully consider all that God has told me about rearing my children so that I will give them the very best of advantages.” We can become forgetful and all of that because there are the remains of foolishness in our hearts as well, by the way.

So these two points: take your job very seriously—take your responsibility seriously—and number two, determine that you will learn from God how best to rear your children.

Four Broad Areas Of Attention

Now, let me give four broad areas of attention that I think should be emphasized in your home in order to be successful. Two of these we will pursue in the next hour and then again tomorrow morning. Two of these are explicitly biblical commands. One of these is very clearly implicit. The fourth one—well, it’s a bit of a step. You’ll see, I think, how it fits. I’m not going to give these in any particular order, but here are four broad areas of attention that you should be giving your mind to and efforts to in your home.

1. Love

Number one: Love. There must be in the home a prevailing atmosphere of love. It was a very conscious effort on my part when my children were little that I wanted them to know—and not only did I want them to know this intellectually, I wanted them to feel it instinctively—that if no one else in the entire world liked them, they were loved at home absolutely just because of who they were. A prevailing atmosphere of love.

And so, never a day passed in the life of my children—to this day, never a day has passed in my children’s life, unless I’m away out of town and can’t talk to them—never a day has passed when they haven’t heard me say many times, and having heard their mother say many times over and again, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” And you hug them, and you kiss them, and you show them all the affection. When they’re little, you tease them, rough them up a little bit, play with them. And in every way you show them your interest in them and show your affection and your love for them.

One of the difficult things in this regard is: don’t spoil them. It’s difficult; it’s really difficult. You see every new toy that comes out and you know that your child will love it and you’ve got to buy it. And then you’ve got to buy the next one, you’ve got to buy the next one. And it’s fun. Try not to spoil them.

In every way, show them love, but not a misguided kind of love that would spoil them. Now on one level, this is necessary. This prevailing atmosphere of love is necessary on one level just to temper your discipline. We’ll talk about that tomorrow morning—very important subject. But if all you have is discipline without a prevailing atmosphere of love, it’s going to be a bare authoritarianism, and it just could have a reverse effect. This is what Paul has in mind in Ephesians 6: “Fathers, don’t exasperate your children. Don’t provoke them to anger.” That’s one way it could be done: discipline with no love. There must be a prevailing atmosphere of love, and let’s say on one level that’s necessary just in order to temper your discipline. Your discipline won’t work; it won’t be effective without it.

Now in this little booklet by J.C. Ryle, he makes a statement in there that’s interesting. Along these kinds of lines, he says, “Try hard to keep hold on your children’s affections.” Try hard to keep hold on your children’s affections. And his point there is to tell you that fear alone will not persuade them deeply. They must sense your love for them and they must then have a love for you. So he says try hard to hold on to your children’s affections.

But let me qualify that just a little bit. I’ve seen too many parents, even Christian parents, make the mistake of having a difficult decision to make and they just can’t bring themselves to make that decision because their child will not approve and they’re afraid, “He won’t love me.” That’s stupid. I don’t know another word for it. You don’t make decisions on that ground. You make decisions based on what’s good for them. But short of that, I think Ryle’s counsel is very good. You want them to love you. And to do that, there must be a prevailing atmosphere from your side—a prevailing atmosphere of love. They must know that you love them absolutely.

And how important is that for their own healthy development? Here’s a kid who comes from a home where every day of his life, he has heard mom and dad say, “I love you, I love you.” Every day of his life, he’s seen demonstrations of that love over and over again, every day. Every day of his life, he’s seen affection shown to him. Here’s another child who grew up in a home where that was never done. And there’s fighting in the home and it’s ugly. You tell me who’s better prepared and psychologically adjusted for life. Who’s better prepared for marriage? Now God’s grace can overcome anything—and I’ve seen Him do it—but a prevailing atmosphere of love is absolutely essential to being a successful parent. I tell our folks this at church: model for your children what it is to love. Fathers, model for them what it is to love as a father, so that when they hear from the Scriptures that God is Father, they get it. That’s on your side; you must do that for them. Number one, a prevailing atmosphere of love.

2. Religion

Number two, for sake of a better word—I’m trying to come up with a word here that captures the whole thing—we’ll call it religion. One: love; two: religion, or if you like better, Christian devotion. Or if you like simply, Ephesians chapter six: “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

Again, J.C. Ryle makes a very important point, and I hope you hear this well. Ryle says, “Train with this thought continually before your eyes…” All right, you with me? “Train with this thought continually before your eyes that the soul of your child is the first thing to be considered.” The soul of your child is the first thing to be considered. I think it would be helpful for you to put a picture on the wall, a plaque on the wall, an engraving with these words from Jesus: “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” And that ought to guide us in our parenting. The soul of our children must be the first thing to be considered. Not how if they have the best clothes, not if they’re involved in the most activities; what must be first in our mind, guiding every decision that we make, every response to our child, everything that we do in shaping the home as it is—first consideration: how will this affect their eternal soul? That’s my goal. That’s my goal: is to see them bow the knee to the Lord Jesus.

Now, let me tell you, this is not the time to hesitate with questions of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. “And if God hasn’t chosen my kids, how can they be saved no matter what I…” This is not the time for that. If you believe—and you should—if you believe that salvation, the salvation of your children, lies in the hands of God, then you will give yourself faithfully to every means that God has appointed to that end. And you will teach, and you’ll evangelize, and you’ll admonish, and you’ll correct, you’ll rebuke, you’ll discipline, and use all the means that He’s given you to that end. You’ll apply yourself to it faithfully. We’ll talk more about this probably in the next hour. Believe in the power of the gospel to save. Saturate your children’s minds with the gospel. Give your children a divine perspective on everything in life. Make the gospel part of the air that they breathe.

Number one, there must be a prevailing atmosphere of love. Two, must give ourselves to this matter of religion or Christian devotion, bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We’ll see more of that next hour.

3. Discipline

Number three: Discipline. Discipline. Back to our text, Proverbs 22:15: “Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.” Discipline, including the use of the rod. We’ll see more of that tomorrow.

Now, if anywhere we find ourselves at odds with society, it’s here. And if you’re going to be successful in parenting, you’ve got to settle it in your minds now. As I said earlier, who knows better on this: God or the secular psychiatrists? Who knows better? And you must settle it in your minds now: God knows better.

Let’s take just a couple of minutes and read through quickly a few verses in Proverbs in this regard. Look at Proverbs chapter 13, verse 24. We’ll see these in more depth tomorrow and we’re going to work through them and think through them together. Look at Proverbs 13:24 just quickly: “Whoever spares the rod hates his son. But he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” Don’t say, don’t say, “Oh, I could never spank my child. I love him too much.” No, you love yourself too much. He that spares the rod hates his son.

Proverbs 19, verse 18: “Discipline your son, for there is hope. Do not set your heart on putting him to death.” You see the contrast there? Failure to discipline means you’re a party to his destruction.

Proverbs 20 and verse 30: “Blows that wound cleanse away evil. Strokes make clean the innermost parts.” I don’t quite get that. I mean, I believe it; I don’t quite get that connection. I don’t understand how God has wired us so that, you know, applied here somehow affects here. But there it is. Blows that wound cleanse away evil. You don’t have to understand it. God has said this; let’s then give ourselves to that.

Proverbs 23, verses 13 and 14: “Do not withhold discipline from a child. If you strike him with a rod, he will not die.” We need that sometimes, don’t we? I forgot verse 13: “Do not withhold discipline from a child. If you strike him with a rod, he will not die.” Verse 14: “If you strike him with a rod, you will save his soul from hell.”

Well, the long and short of it here is that the right use of the rod—and we’re going to have to work that out tomorrow morning—but the right use of the rod, God says, is a means of grace. We talk about the means of grace in Christian theology, and usually we’re talking about prayer, the Word of God, and so on. But here He tells us: the right use of the rod in the hands of the parents is a means of grace for our children. And in a sense, this is modeled after God’s dealing with us as His children. Proverbs chapter three works that out. It’s quoted in Hebrews chapter 12 at some length, dealing with the way God deals with us as His children. And sometimes the discipline comes. And so we can be confident that in doing this rightly, we are modeling ourselves after God’s dealings with us as His children.

4. Fun

All right, I said four areas of attention. Number one: Love, a prevailing atmosphere of love. Number two: Discipline. Number three: Religion. Number four—and I told you this might not have a really clear verse of Scripture for it; I think you’ll see it’s not too big of a jump—Number four: Fun. Fun. Love, discipline, religion, and fun.

Now, I don’t really have a specific verse for this, but you can see it’s not too big of a jump, isn’t it? This is an extension of a model home life. And for God’s sake, for God’s sake, don’t sour your children on the gospel by being sour and angry and ugly at home. I was talking to a young man recently in our area who’s now a Christian serving the Lord. He grew up in a good gospel-preaching church. His pastor is a friend of mine. He came through his teen years, rebelled against God, went out into the world with a vengeance. Finally, now he’s a Christian. And he said to me, looking back on it, one of the hurdles—he said that keeping me from being saved, just from my standpoint—he said, “One of the hurdles was mom and dad. They would fight. The atmosphere at home was terrible. Dad would cuss at mom. They’d both holler at each other. They’d do it all the way to church, walking to church and put on their church face.” And he said, “I just assumed all Christians were like that.” And in one sense, you can’t blame him.

Don’t sour your kids. Make the atmosphere at home fun. I wanted my children—with a vengeance I wanted this—I wanted my children to believe and to feel it deeply in their hearts that our home really was the happiest spot on the planet. And I gave myself to that. Fun was my department. I gave myself to it with a vengeance. They knew it. Fun was dad’s department. Mealtime was a riot. We had so much fun every evening together, talking and laughing and having fun. Get up one morning, sit at the breakfast table: “Well, kids, you want to do school today or you want to go to Knoebels Grove Amusement Park?” “Can we?” “Well, only if you want to.” Creating memories, having fun—part of a model home life, part of showing your love. We have countless memories like that of our happy home life: playing, wrestling, hide-and-go-seek, jokes, teasing, fun.

Prevailing atmosphere of love, discipline, religion, and fun.

The Happy Prospect Of Faithful Parenting

And before I close, let me look at a couple of verses again. Proverbs chapter 22. Proverbs chapter 22. First of all, look at verse six: “Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Now, I know what many of you are thinking, and I know it because I’ve thought it myself, and many, many others have expressed it as well. What you’re thinking is, “Okay, this proverb says, ‘train up a child in the way he should go, and when he’s old, he’ll turn out right.’ But I know so-and-so and it didn’t work,” right? Some of you thinking that?

First of all, proverbs are not promises. They’re proverbs. They’re short, pithy sayings that condense the way life is. And so, allowing for exceptions, the verse still is true, isn’t it? Train up a child the way he should go. When he’s old, he won’t depart from it. That’s the way it works. Are there exceptions? Sure there are. There are no guarantees. But this is the way it works. Now, don’t get hung up on the exceptions. Look at the happy prospect that God gives you here. Train up a child the way he should go. When he’s old, he won’t depart from it.

Look at verse 15 again in that regard: “Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.” That is, it works. Are there exceptions? Yeah, there are exceptions sometimes. There are some that just have foolishness so inbred in their hearts. But this is the way it works. And we’ve seen it work and we’ve seen it work and we’ve seen it work and we’ve seen this model work over the generations for centuries. It works. And rather than getting hung up on the exceptions, you ought to focus on the happy prospect that God gives you here. And as I give myself faithfully to what God has said, I have the happy prospect that God will bless and God will honor that.

What you should do—we did this many times when our children were growing up—is back off and think, “All right, here’s my son and my daughter, age eight, age ten, age three, age five, whatever. Picture them at age 18. What do you have now that makes that picture difficult? Picture them at age 22 and they’re out of college and moving out on their own now. And what is there in this picture now that makes that picture look difficult?” When we do this, what do we want them to be at age 18, at age 22? And that’s what we’re working for. And we steer life that way.

Give yourself to this and pray and pray and pray and pray and pray that God will make you the means of saving your children. For the glory of God, for the good of your children, for your own happiness, become experts on this. Give yourself to it. Determine that you’ll learn from God how to rear your children. Pray; give yourself to it. The stakes are high and it demands your attention. Well, this is where we must begin: parenting with a purpose. We have an agenda that’s set for us by God Himself and that must shape our entire outlook. We’ll see more of that in the next hour. All right.